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To cite this article: Saila Parveen & I. M. Faisal (2002) People versus Power: The
Geopolitics of Kaptai Dam in Bangladesh, International Journal of Water Resources
Development, 18:1, 197-208, DOI: 10.1080/07900620220121756
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Water Resources Development, Vol. 18, No. 1, 197–208, 2002
ABSTRACT This paper examines the impacts of the Kaptai dam, in the Chittagong Hill
Tracts of Bangladesh, on the tribal communities of that area. Kaptai dam is the only
hydropower source in Bangladesh, with an installed capacity of 230 MW; about 5% of
the electricity consumed in the country is produced there. When the dam was built in
1962, some 100 000 people were displaced and few of them received adequate compen-
sation. Recently, the Power Development Board (PDB) of Bangladesh has announced a
plan to install two new 50 MW units that will bring the capacity of the dam to 330
MW. This plan will cause the reservoir water level to rise and may take away about 7500
ha of the fringe land, which the tribal people use for rice cultivation during the
April–August period each year. As before, the PDB has not discussed this plan with the
potentially affected tribal groups, who are concerned about losing the fringe land and an
important source of income. The paper discusses the original displacement issue and this
recent development in the light of the geopolitical history of this region. It attempts to
present an objective analysis of these issues and views held by various concerned parties.
It then proposes a scheme for managing the Kaptai reservoir based on a participatory
approach that will ensure both economic efciency and social equity.
Introduction
Located in the scenic landscape of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), the Kaptai
dam, on the River Karnafuli, is the only hydro-electric power source in
Bangladesh (Figure 1). Commissioned on 30 March 1962, the dam initially had
two hydropower units with a total capacity of 80 MW. Presently, the dam has
ve units with a total capacity of 230 MW and it produces approximately 5% of
the electricity consumed in Bangladesh. Basic features of the dam are shown in
Table 1 (PDB, 1985).
The Kaptai dam was supposed to provide benets in terms of hydropower,
ood control, irrigation and drainage, navigation and enhanced forest resource
harvesting. Most of these objectives have been served in various degrees except
irrigation and drainage. More recently, commercial sh culture and recreation
activities have been introduced in the lake.
This, however, is part of the story. During construction, the dam ooded an
area of some 655 km2, which included about 22 000 ha of cultivable land—40%
of all such land in the CHT. The lake took away the homes of 18 000 families and
displaced 100 000 tribal people, of which 70% were Chakma (Government of
0790-062 7 Print/1360-064 8 On-line/02/010197–12 Ó 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/0790062022012175 6
198 S. Parveen & I. M. Faisal
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Bangladesh, 1975). The dam also ooded the original Rangamati town and the
palace of the Chakma Raja (king).
A rather casual attempt was made to rehabilitate this large group of people—
nearly 25% of the local population. Ofcially, the majority of the displaced
people were rehabilitated on the upper reaches of the rivers Kasalong and
Chengi during the early phase of the project (construction of the dam began in
Geopolitics of Kaptai Dam in Bangladesh 199
Feature Size/type
Year Event
1958 After the military takeover in Pakistan the ‘opening up’ of the CHT was accelerated.
1960 Government transferred all local indigenous employees in administration to other parts of East
Pakistan.
1962 The constitution changed the status of the CHT from an ‘excluded area’ to a ‘tribal area’.
1962 Construction of the Kaptai hydro-electric dam was completed, which submerged 22 000 ha of
cultivable land and displaced 100 000 people without proper compensation and rehabilitation.
1964 By an act of parliament, the CHT ceased to be a tribal area from 10 January 1964. Accelerated
inux of Bengalis had sown the seed of politicizatio n of the CHT.
1971 Liberation war and independence of Bangladesh.
king of Arakan (most of Arakan lies in Myanmar now) drove him out. Later on,
the Mughols drove the Marma people out of Arakan in 1756 (Hutchinson, 1906).
Other tribes of the CHT have a similar history.
According to Thomas Herbert Lewin, a soldier-cum-administrator of British
India’s north-east frontier, “a greater proportion of the hill tribes at present
living in the Chittagong Hill Tracts undoubtedly came about two generations
ago from Arakan. This is asserted both by their own traditions and by records
in Chittagong Collectorate” (Lewin, 1869). Accordingly, the claim often made by
the tribal people that they are the ‘sons of the soil’ is not valid in the sense of
being original settlers in the CHT. Bengali settlers lived in parts of the CHT long
before that time, albeit in small numbers.
The different tribal communities of the CHT have lived separately from the
beginning and have distinct linguistic, cultural and anthropological features.
Over the course of about 300 years, these hill communities have gone through
a series of interventions sometimes protecting and sometimes undermining their
interests. These events have been summarized in Table 2 for the 1860–1971
period.
It is evident from the series of events that the displacement of 100 000 tribal
people due to the Kaptai dam was almost inevitable, as their control over the
region was gradually being curtailed, which culminated with the annulment of
the tribal area status of the CHT in 1964.
The issue of resettlement of the displaced people was handled poorly for a
number of reasons. There was a general lack of understanding of the tribal
culture by the government of Pakistan and the donor agencies (the dam was
202 S. Parveen & I. M. Faisal
funded by USAID). They thought that these were ‘nomadic’ hill-people practis-
ing jhum cultivation and it was unnecessary to design a permanent resettlement
programme for them. In reality, the tribal people did move from hill to hill but
they had a long cycle of jhum cultivation. Before the inundation of the Karnafuli
valley, the average cycle of jhum cultivation was 7–10 years, and in some cases
10–15 years. After inundation of the river valleys, which took away 40% of the
fertile agricultural land, this cycle became reduced to only 3–5 years as thou-
sands of local people were forced back to jhum cultivation. This pressure on land
was further intensied by the rapid population growth that took place during
the 1960s and 1970s in the entire CHT area. The collective outcome of these
developments was intensive agriculture both in the remaining plain lands and
in the hills, leading to soil erosion, productivity loss and water pollution caused
by increased use of fertilizer and pesticides.
The other important reason for not having an adequate relocation scheme was
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latter part of the 1960s, the rate of inux of the Bengalis increased due to the
setting up of some major industrial infrastructures such as the Karnafuli pulp
and paper mill and administrative ofces of various departments of the govern-
ment.
leaders held in Rangamati. At the same time the tribal students formed an
association called the Pahari Chatra Samity (PCS).
Initially, both the PCJSS and the PCS tried to establish their claims through
democratic and non-violent ways. First, Larma called on Sheikh Mujibur Rah-
man, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, to protest the fact that the ethnic
minorities were designated as Bengalis in the rst constitution of Bangladesh.
Larma, with a delegation of the tribal people, also demanded autonomy for the
CHT region, which was denied on grounds of territorial integrity and sover-
eignty of the country. Other issues taken up by the PCJSS included: legal
protection from attacks by the Bengali settlers and illegal dispossession of
property; ending the migration of Bengalis from plain lands; the recovery of lost
property; and tolerance of tribal culture and religion.
In 1975, the Mujib government was overthrown by a military coup and the
relationship between the PCJSS and the military government worsened. During
this time (1975–76), the PCJSS formed its secret armed wing, the Santi Bahini
(Peace Force). It received shelter and training in the neighbouring Indian states
of Tripura and Mizoram, and began to engage in guerilla warfare with the
Bangladeshi police and army. As a result, a large contingent of the Bangladesh
army remained deployed in the CHT after then and both sides suffered major
causalities, although reliable statistics are hard to come by. In the early 1980s, the
Bangladesh government brought a large number of landless people from the
districts of Chittagong, Sylhel, Comilla and Noakhali into the CHT.3 This action
contributed to the rapid change in the population composition in the CHT
(Figure 2) and intensied the number of conicts with and the resentment of the
tribal people.
The armed confrontation slowed down in the early 1990s. After the general
election of 1991, the newly formed government formed a special committee on
the CHT region to arrive at political solutions for issues raised by the PCJSS. The
rst meeting of this committee with the PCJSS was held on 5 November 1992.
This marked the beginning of the peace-making process, which led to an
agreement between the two parties regarding the repatriation of the tribal
refugees from India. Accordingly, the rst batch of the refugees returned home
on 15 February 1994. The peace process continued, which culminated in signing
the peace treaty between the government of Bangladesh and the PCJSS in
December 1997.
204 S. Parveen & I. M. Faisal
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Figure 3. Rule curve for the Kaptai hydropower station. Source: Noman (1997).
affected due to natural reasons and compensation is neither demanded nor paid
by any side. Here, the argument put forward by the PDB seems reasonable.
However, its position should be explained to the potentially affected group
clearly and honestly. The extent of loss in economic terms should also be
quantied and compared with the benet of power generation to get a better
perspective on the issue. The PDB may set aside some funds to gradually train
the affected group in alternative income generation means so that this issue
becomes inconsequential over time. Due to the volatile and sensitive sociopolit-
ical situation in the CHT, this issue has received a lot of local and international
attention. As a result, the PDB has been asked by the sponsor JBIC to carry out
a social impact study with the following specic objectives as mentioned in the
terms of reference of the study: (1) develop a rule curve for reservoir operation;
(2) assessment of social impact due to the proposed expansion of the Kaptai
power plant for the sixth and seventh units, including the existing units; and (3)
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The World Commission on Dams (WCD) has already prepared the road map
to a better planning approach when it comes to planning, constructing and
managing a dam. According to the WCD, issues pertaining to dams should be
examined in the light of a few key criteria: efciency, equity, accountability,
participatory decision making and sustainability. In the case of the Kaptai dam,
the principles of equity, accountability and participatory decision making have
not been followed from the beginning. The time has come to incorporate these
at the earliest opportunity, not only to avoid fresh contentions in this region but
also to let the tribal people have their say and reap some of the benets that the
dam has to offer.
Concluding Remarks
All over the world, there are more than 15 000 large and numerous other small
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dams that have displaced some 60 million people from their homelands. In the
recent past, Turkey has built the Ataturk dam in the Kurdish region, where some
60 000 people were displaced. Another project in this region, the Illisu dam, will
affect about 75 000 people of the Kurdish region. Such encroachments on the
resources and rights of the people of the land are not isolated—the Narmada in
India, the Three Gorges in China, the Nam Theun II in Laos and the Itoiz in
Spain are just a few examples of such violations.
Unfortunately, a large part of the population displaced by dams has come
from the underclass and the tribal communities. In India, about 40% of the
people displaced by dams have been low castes or tribal people, even though
they make up less than 6% of the Indian population. The story looks very similar
in Bangladesh. It is about time that the government and the affected groups
worked out a peaceful and mutually agreeable solution in a democratic way and
through a properly designed institutional framework. This would go a long way
in ensuring the security and prosperity of the CHT region in the new millen-
nium.
Notes
1. This estimate is based on the data provided by the Agricultural Extension Department of
Rangamati via memo. no. 65(A) to the PDB ofce at Kaptai.
2. A mouja is a cluster of villages; several moujas make a union and several unions make a thana,
which is the smallest administrative unit in Bangladesh.
3. The resettlement programme was carried out under government instructions issued through
condential letters from the Commissioner of the Chittagong Division to the Deputy Commis-
sioner of the CHT district dated 4 September 1980, Ref. No. 66(a), and from the Deputy
Commissioner of the CHT district to his counterparts of the other districts dated 10 September
1980, Ref. No. 1055(a). In the letters, Bengali families from other districts were promised 2 ha of
high land, 1.6 ha of mixed land and 1 ha of paddy land if they migrated to the CHT region
(Chakma et al., 1995).
4. The latest composition of this committee has been specied in a circular of the Ministry of Power,
Energy and Mineral Resources dated 25 February 2001, Ref. No. 2/B:/PG-88/251 (part)/88.
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Government of Bangladesh (1975) Chittagong Hill Tracts District Gazetteer (Dhaka, BG Press).
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Hutchinson, R.H.S. (1906) An Account of Chittagong Hill Tracts (Calcutta, Bengal Secretariat Press).
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